Slovakia fetches the Eurocrats a delicious slap across the chops – but the bailouts will go ahead regardless

Congratulations Slovakia! Gratulujem Slovensko! The plucky little Carpathian nation has struck a blow for hundreds of millions of unconsulted Europeans. Everywhere else, MPs ignored their constituents' wishes and voted to pour money away on eurozone bailouts. Thank Heaven representative government works in one place.

Sixteen of the seventeen eurozone members meekly opened their wallets, but Slovaks didn't see why they should subsidise countries with higher incomes than their own. Slovakia has, as I've mentioned before, done almost all the right things over the past decade, adopting a flat tax, selling off state industries, reforming its pension system and shrinking its public sector as a percentage of GDP. Told that they would be punished for their surplus so as to reward Greece for its deficit, Slovaks understandably bridled.

Their liberal party, SaS and, even more so, our conservative ally, OKS, argued that, instead of imposing its model on Slovakia, the EU should learn from the Slovak experience. You can't solve a debt crisis with more debt. The main opposition joined them – motivated, it's true, by dislike of the government rather than of the EFSF. Still, the result was the same: no approval.

What happens now? Brussels will bring the full force of its hideous strength to bear on Slovakia, and the vote will probably be reversed. If, somehow, the mountain republic holds out, the EU will circumvent its opposition and go ahead with a coalition of the willing: Slovakia's share of the EFSF, after all, would have amounted to less than two per cent. True, other countries might seek to follow Slovakia's example but, given the pusillanimity of their MPs to date, it seems unlikely.

If you think I'm being snotty about the other eurozone members, by the way, ponder the humiliating fact that our own House of Commons voted to contribute £12.5 billion to the bailouts when we hadn't even joined the wretched currency. Of 650 MPs, only 48 voted against. The other 602 might learn a useful lesson in courage from their Slovakian counterparts. Even if their gesture turns out to be futile – and I suspect that, one way or another, the EU will get its bailout fund – they have reminded the rest of us, for a few glorious days, what it means to live in a functioning democracy.